Powered ground board issue

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

I installed a powered ground board system on my scope about 12 months ago. It has worked perfectly up to now but has now stopped. I suspect the issue is the fact that the power output from the system is via RCA jacks but all my accessories (dew controller and Argo Navis) use a cigarette lighter jack, so I had to rig up a connection using a double cig lighter adaptor and I replaced the male plug from that with an RCA plug. As my skills in this dept are not good I was hoping to find out what others do with this sort of rig?
The ground board system is the Astro Systems one BTW

Cheers

Malcolm

[sn1987a (Barry)]

Are you running a ServoCat?. Sometimes cheap RCA plugs can short out intermittently when the wire twists one way or another. Also the groundboard brass pickup posts can get stuck in the sliders on certain orientations/positions of the scope and don't make enough contact. I ended up using silver electrical contact grease to lube them up ( about 30 bucks for a little syringe full ).

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

No Servocat, only Argo Navis and a Kendrick Digifire 7 dew controller. Will pull it apart on the weekend and try to isolate the issue, but will see if I can get some of that lube!

Thanks

Malcolm

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

+1 on the plunger for the electrical contact. Although mine caused intermittent power dropouts after about 24 months trouble free operation as the scope slewed in azimuth, it was easily fixed by tightening the screw.
cheers,
Andrew

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

I pulled it apart on the weekend and it seems it was the rods getting stuck. All working now.

Malcolm